Ford Fellowship Community

Overview

The Ford Foundation provides two major fellowships for graduate students who are committed to college or university teaching careers and will use diversity as a resource to enrich students’ education. The Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship provides 3 years of stipend support ($24,000 per year) for Ph.D. or Sc.D. students who are relatively early in their programs (at least 3 years remaining in program by the funding start date). The Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship provides a $25,000 stipend for your final dissertation completion year in an eligible Ph.D. or Sc.D. program. University of Iowa graduate students applicants are also eligible for the Fellowship Incentive Program ($500 for applying if feedback from a faculty advisor and fellowships advisor is obtained before submitting to the Ford Foundation--full details on webpage).

Contents

Key Components

Eligibility: Official Ford Foundation fellowship information is described on the organization website; read their descriptions carefully. Briefly, eligibility criteria include:

Both Predoctoral and Dissertation:

Must be pursuing a Ph.D. or Sc.D. degree in an eligible field of study.

Eligible disciplines are quite broad, including most fields in Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Engineering, Humanities, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences. Education-related Ph.D. programs are eligible only if the work is strongly interdisciplinary with another field (e.g., degree program is “sociology of education”).

BOTH Predoctoral & Dissertation Fellowships:Statement of Previous Research and Scholarly Productivity (3 pages, double-spaced) with list of publications and presentations

Predoctoral: (A) Describe any previous research (or activities that have prepared you to begin research), including context on the setting (course, internship, summer program, etc.), methods, and actual/expected results. (B) List publications and presentations for the last 5 years.

Dissertation: (A) Describe (i) undergraduate research; (ii) your research to date in your graduate program (including dissertation progress); and (iii) the goals, methods, results, and impacts of your graduate research. (B) List publications and presentations for the last 5 years.

ONLY Predoctoral Fellowship:Proposed Plan of Graduate Study and Research & Long-Range Career Goals (2 pages, double-spaced)

Describe: (A) your area of study and the research issue of interest, (B) why your institution is well-suited to the field and type of study, (C) why your courses will be relevant to the overall plan of study/research, (D) research methods and theoretical framework, (E) how the research will be useful and how it relates to society as a whole, (F) explanation of your long-term career goals.

ONLY Dissertation Fellowship:Proposed Plan for Completion of Dissertation and timeline describing the applicant's long-range career goals (3 pages, double-spaced)

Describe: (A) your overall dissertation framework, (B) what research remains to be completed for the dissertation—including methods and data sources, (C) timeline for dissertation writing, (D) discussion of possible barriers to dissertation completion, (E) expected date of dissertation defense, (F) description of how your dissertation work will contribute to your career plans and your overall field of study.

Reference Letters: The best letters are from people who can best comment on your activities and qualities that are most relevant to the fellowship’s evaluation criteria—for the Ford fellowship—whether Predoctoral or Dissertation—this will be your academic achievements (past and future potential), ability to respond to the learning needs of diverse students, sustained engagement with communities underrepresented in academia (and ability to bring this engagement into your teaching/scholarship), and your likelihood of using the diversity of human experience as a resource in your teaching/scholarship. This means that your letter writers must collectively be able to comment on your research, outreach, and teaching. Ford requires a minimum of 3 letters from professors, so ideally include faculty who know your work well across each of these aspects. Since 4 total letters can be submitted (and Ford highly recommends doing so), additional letter writers strongly familiar with your outreach/teaching can also be included if your professor writers are less familiar with those aspects of your work.

“Letters of Recommendation” by The IU GradGrants Center, Indiana University (introductory guide to picking and working with letter writers)

“Writing a Letter of Recommendation,” an extremely useful resource for students and faculty by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (while some content is specific to biomedical research, most advice is generalizable across all disciplines)

Example Materials

UI donated example essays – login to OneDrive using your HawkID and password. Please note these resources are donated and for University of Iowa student use only.

Feedback Appointments

The UI Graduate Success Office (grad-success@uiowa.edu) can give feedback on written drafts of your application materials. We strongly recommend booking appointments well in advance, as Fall semester is the busiest season for fellowships. If you are applying for a Ford Foundation fellowship and none of the available online options work with your schedule, please contact us—we will do our best to find additional scheduling options.

Incentive Programs: Preparing a competitive application for a Ford Foundation Fellowship requires a great deal of thought, time, and effort that helps you further develop your research ideas and writing skills. In recognition of this investment and the benefits, UI graduate student applicants for this fellowship can be eligible for up to two different incentive programs:

If you plan to work with a comparable fellowships advisor not listed above, please have them e-mail grad-success@uiowa.edu in advance to ensure coordination with the Fellowship Incentive Program.

Supplement for External Fellowship (SEF) Program: PhD students in biomedical sciences programs listed on the SEF page who (A) have a thesis mentor with a primary appointment in the Carver College of Medicine (CCOM) and (B) win an individual, competitive extramural fellowship of $10,000 or more (including Ford Foundation Fellowships) are eligible for a stipend supplement of $2000 every year the fellowship is active (total of $6000 for Predoctoral Fellowship, $2000 for Dissertation Fellowship.)

Resources for Letter Writers

Review Criteria and Reviewer Perspectives

Reviewers for the Ford Foundation fellowships—whether Predoctoral or Dissertation—are evaluating applicants on their research, teaching, and outreach. To the degree that you have direct knowledge, ideally provide context about any or all of the following evaluation criteria:

academic achievements (past and future potential), ability to respond to the learning needs of diverse students, sustained engagement with communities underrepresented in academia (and ability to bring this engagement into their teaching/scholarship), likelihood of using the diversity of human experience as a resource in teaching/scholarship

The most helpful recommendation letters will include specific examples and details to establish and illustrate the student’s activities.

Saying an applicant is “the most promising student I’ve seen at this point in a degree program” would be an even more powerful statement with quantitative scope (“[…] in # years of mentoring # doctoral students”) and/or qualitative context (“[…]in terms of initiative to seek publication opportunities”) to clearly state the reasons that the student is promising.

Asserting that “this project is very original” is less persuasive than establishing the prior approach and then giving concise explanations of what is new about the approaches, subject matter, perspectives, etc. the applicant uses.

Reference Letter Resources

“Writing a Letter of Recommendation”, an extremely useful collection of advice from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (most advice is generalizable across broad fields).

Particularly note pp. 10-11 and 15-19 for examples of how many small word choice differences (often unconsciously done when describing female vs. male applicants) can add up to a substantially stronger or weaker impression of an applicant.

A Nature article by Dutt et al. (2016) found that letter writers from the Americas tend to write longer letters than writers from other geographic regions (Table 3). Be aware of the potential impact of cultural differences in how lengthy or superlative a letter is expected to be—especially if most reviewers will be used to letter norms in the Americas.

Also see Table 2 and “Methods” section for a summary of letter qualities that surveyed senior faculty interpreted as “excellent,” “good,” or “doubtful.”

Community Contacts

Fellowships Advisors:

The UI Graduate Success Office (grad-success@uiowa.edu) can give feedback on written drafts of your application materials. We strongly recommend booking appointments well in advance, as Fall semester is the busiest season for fellowships. If you are applying for a Ford fellowship and none of the available online options work with your schedule, please contact us—we will do our best to find additional scheduling options.

Faculty, staff, and students willing to work with graduate student Ford Foundation applicants:

FAQ

What do they mean by my “capacity to respond in pedagogically productive ways to the learning needs of students from diverse backgrounds”?

Pedagogy is the practice of teaching, so being “pedagogically productive” is essentially being an effective teacher. Knowing whether your teaching is effective can be a much larger topic than simply grading weekly quizzes.

Responding to “the learning needs of students from diverse backgrounds” means that you both (A) are aware of the ways in which various aspects of students’ backgrounds can impact their academic preparation, familiarity with unwritten rules of higher education, willingness to speak freely in class discussions, feelings of inclusion or exclusion, or other topics that affect the learning process and (B) use teaching strategies informed by this awareness.

See the corresponding Professional Development pages to read more about diversity and teaching.

Although this terminology may feel intimidating, the UI Center for Teaching’s resource collections about Inclusive Teaching and Diversity provides a good overview of concepts and strategies you may already be using as a TA or instructor. If this is your first time learning about these teaching methods and/or if you haven’t had much prior teaching experience, that’s ok! Although having prior experience teaching with responsive methods is best, demonstrating your preparation for teaching is also part of your “capacity to respond.”

What’s the “annotated bibliography” required for the Dissertation Fellowship?

Annotated bibliographies (most common in Humanities—far less so in STEM fields) are essentially expanded reference sections with an additional 2-4 sentences of descriptive text for each citation summarizing the most key points of that source as it relates to your project. Because the descriptions are a way to give more background context about your project, aim to include a range of references—introductory information, the need for the project, methods, key prior studies, feasibility. However, each description should be primarily a summary of the source’s content—don’t treat it as a spill-over of your own project’s methods section.

“Membership in one or more of the groups listed in the selection criteria as those whose underrepresentation in the American professoriate has been severe and longstanding is just one of the several factors that will be considered as positive factors in choosing successful candidates. This factor is not a program eligibility requirement.”

How do I even begin to write about so many topics in so short a page limit?!

Every word counts—“as well as” is comparable to “and,” “for the purpose of” can be a simple “to,” and so on.

Think “concise” (a balance of brief yet specific)—writing only to be “brief” tends to omit details, while writing only to be “specific” risks getting too lengthy.

Don’t write in the same style as you would for a scholarly journal article or your thesis committee; avoid highly field-specific terminology (“jargon”) and focus on presenting the core ideas as clearly and concisely as possible.

STEM applicants: Do include a summary of your methods, but do not make the proposal entirely methodology.

Humanities applicants: You do need to include some context about your methods (what sources you’re using, if you need to visit particular archives, your conceptual framework).

Check for any sentences that are extremely general and could be equally applicable to almost any other applicant (e.g., “I’m strongly committed to university teaching”), and either omit them or make them more specific to your individual experiences/goals.

Starting with 1 very specific sentence for each key required topic, then add in other key content as necessary to support the point

Start with an outline, convert each item to a complete sentence, and elaborate as needed/able

Write everything you want to include; first condense the phrasing, and then consider whether content needs to be cut

Try to minimize duplicate content across the essays; although the content can often overlap (e.g., long-term goals/research/teaching) and all aspects of you should feel like a coherent whole, try to present different aspects in different essays (e.g., essays with career goals still need to mention teaching, but the descriptions of how you personally teach might fit better in the Personal Statement).

Be strategic in what is most critical to highlight—have a balance of past, present, and future (not only a summary of your work up until this point).

How much will my reviewers know about my research topic?

Both the Predoctoral and Dissertation fellowship pages specify that: “Not all reviewers will have specific technical expertise; therefore, applications should be written to provide informative detail without jargon and highly technical content.” Therefore, your application should withstand an expert’s scrutiny yet still be understandable to a non-specialist reader. Because each essay is very short, you will not have room to go into the same level of specialist detail that you would if writing for an academic journal or your thesis committee.

What is routing, and do I have to do routing for this application?

Routing with the Division of Sponsored Programs (DSP) requires the final versions of your materials to be submitted to DSP on their website 5 business days before the deadline on the funding organization’s website (see the DSP website for more information). Routing is mandatory for awards that require a faculty member or the university itself to submit the application on your behalf (examples: NSF DDRIG, NIH F31/F30/R36).

Because you submit the Ford Foundation fellowship application yourself, independently, as an individual, you do not have to complete routing to submit the application. You, the applicant, are solely responsible for submitting your materials to the funding agency by the deadline.

If you win a Ford Foundation fellowship, you will need to contact DSP as soon as possible to set up an award management account in the UI system.

Do I need to submit my fellowship application materials to the Graduate College before they are submitted to the funding agency?

No. The Graduate College can give writing feedback on your application (content, clarity, style, accessibility to a non-specialist reader) that we strongly encourage you to utilize; getting feedback from a fellowships specialist is also part of the FIP eligibility requirements. However, this feedback is not required to submit an application to the Ford Foundation.

Does the Graduate College submit my application materials for me?

No. You, the applicant, are solely responsible for submitting your materials to the funding agency by the deadline.

Is this opportunity Fellowship Incentive Program (FIP)-eligible?

Yes, you are eligible for a $500 application incentive award if you work with your faculty advisor and get feedback from a fellowships advisor before submitting the final materials to the Ford Foundation. Read more about FIP here.

Who are the fellowships advisors I have to meet with to be FIP-eligible?

Fellowships advisors include the Grad Success Office, Nancy Goldsmith (Nursing), Amy Charles (Chemistry --only students specifically in the Chemistry department), or Karen Wachsmuth (International Programs). If you are working with another fellowships advisor in your department who fills a similar role, please have them contact us at grad-success@uiowa.edu in advance to ensure coordination with the Fellowship Incentive Program.

DSP reviews grant applications only for completion and formatting, not content or clarity of writing style; therefore, DSP routing is not a substitute for feedback from a fellowships advisor.

I’m a previous winner, reviewer, or mentor who would like to be a Community Contact. How can I have my name added to the list?

How much time does it take to write an application for this fellowship?

Longer than you may think! Even though the Ford Foundation essays are only 2 to 3 pages double-spaced each, shorter applications are often the most challenging because every word is valuable in such limited space. Writing for a reviewer who isn’t a specialist in your topic (and who will be reading about you and your project for the first time) is also a distinct challenge compared to writing for an all-specialist audience (such as a journal, your advisor, and other people in your research group).

The specific amount of time varies, but you should allow ample time for:

Brainstorming on your own and with others

Contacting prospective reference writers to see if they’re willing to write a strong, positive letter for you

Drafting an outline

Writing the first draft

Revising the draft to where you are comfortable having others read it

Getting feedback from specialist readers (e.g., your advisor, other people in your research group) and non-specialist readers (e.g., fellowships advisors, other trusted friends/family/mentors)

Making revisions, final editing

Sending final or near-final versions of your materials to your reference writers